The Police investigating into a theft of pawned gold jewellery amounting to around Rs.70 million from a financial institution at Kalawana had arrested the loan officer and another at the same institution with the looted stock of jewellery within four hours after the incident.
The two officers had allegedly robbed three kilogrammes and 770 grams of gold jewellery and the stock had been found by the police buried in a paddy field behind the house of the gold loan officer.
Suranjith Bandara (33), the gold loan officer who was arrested for committing this theft, and Thivanka Jayasekara (26), who was arrested for aiding and abetting this theft, were presented to the Kalawana Magistrate’s Court yesterday and were remanded until today (24).
The acting manager of the relevant financial institution has said that when the financial institution was closed at 2 pm on April 20 and opened again in the morning on the next day, thieves had broken into the institution and opened the safe and had stolen the gold items. The employees had even removed the CCTV data recording system of the financial institution.
However, due to the modernization of the security camera system of this financial institution with new technology recently, it had been arranged to record the CCTV footage at another location as well.
When checking the footage it had been found that the theft had been committed by the gold loan officer working at the same institution. It is said that this officer who had served at the institution for a long period was a trusted employee and the management had even given him a set of keys to the main door of the institution.
He used those keys to open the door and then had smashed the four padlocks with an iron bar to show that it was the act of a thief.Then he had opened the safe and had taken the gold items, broke the glass windows and doors of the institution and also had taken the CCTV decoder with him.
However, the suspect had no knowledge about the recent mechanism installed to record the CCTV footage at another location as well, Police said.
N.P.Rajadorai, Sena Gamage, Sena Weragama and Niroshana Perera